When the Tigers pulled the trigger on the megadeal that brought Dontrelle Willis and Miguel Cabrera to Detroit, baseball experts and prognosticators couldn't keep themselves from gushing over Detroit... Would they win 100 games? Would they return to the World Series? How great will the AL Central race between Detroit and Cleveland be? Bla, bla, bla. Flash forward to the end of July and the Tigers have been buried in the Central pretty much since Day 1, and just in time for a macthup with the Sox, they're playing good ball again. After fighting to get back to .500 in mid-June, Detroit sort of floated with a break-even record until this past week, when the salvaged the final game of their series in Baltimore and swept the Royals in Kansas City. Riding a 4-game win streak, they sit only 5½ games behind the closest they've been to the division lead since they were 42-40 and 5 games back on July 1.OFFENSE: 507 R (3rd in A.L.), 5.02 RPG (3rd), 969 H (3rd), 115 HR (3rd), .276 Team BA (4th)
PITCHING: 4.36 ERA (11th), .266 BAA (9th), 4.44 Starter ERA (9th), 4.22 Bullpen ERA (12th)
HOME SPLITS: .302 BA (2nd), .361 OBP (3rd), .492 SLG (2nd), 4.41 ERA (12th)
LAST 10 SOX/DET GAMES: Memorably, the Tigers swept the last series between these two, a 3-game set in mid June at Comerica. That was the series immediately after the Sox's 4-game sweep of Minnesota. The teams met 6 times in April, in Detroit during the first weekend of the series that the Sox swept (which concluded with that 13-2 pounding of Justin Verlander and the Tigers on ESPN), and then the next weekend at the Cell, in which the Sox took 2 of 3 from Detroit, including back-to-back shutouts. The Sox's 7-0 win over Detroit on April 12 was the first of Gavin Floyd's flirtations with a no-no. The Tigers beat the White Sox on the last day of the 2007 season, so the team have split their last 10 right down the middle.
NON-OBVIOUS PLAYER TO WATCH: In a lineup full of sluggers like Magglio Ordonez, Miguel Cabrera, and Gary Sheffield you might be surprised to find that Marcus Thames leads the team in home runs and is outslugging everyone who has picked up a bat for Detroit outside of Matt Joyce (another guy, I guess to watch).
PROBABLE PITCHERS: Tonight, Gavin Floyd takes the hill for the Sox. His career against the Tigers has been well documented and brilliant, Gavin has started 6 games against Detroit over the last two years and has allowed only 12 total runs, good for an ERA of 2.43 and record of 3-0. Detroit counters with Nate Robertson, who had a career year for the Tigers during the World Series run in 2006, but has been on the downslide since, though that's not shocking as his career ERA is 4.74 and the Sox have hit him well, especially big guns like Jermaine Dye and Jim Thome, who are hitting .371/5/9 and .471/2/3 against him respectively.
Tomorrow night, John Danks looks to rebound from his first truly bad outing since April 9. Danks' ERA was pushed over 3 for the first time since June 9, but he is still in the Top 5 of the American League. Justin Verlander will start for Detroit, and while he got off to a rocky start this season, he has turned his shit around since he was 1-7 with an ERA over 6 on May 14. In 12 starts since then, he's gone 7-2 with a 2.53 ERA in 81.2 innings and a BAA that's under .200. If there is one alarming stat, however, it would be lower than usual K/BB ratio, which even during his good stretch is right around 2:1.
Finally, Javier Vazquez goes for the Sox in Sunday afternoon's finale against Zach Miner. Vazquez has pitched poorly of late and Comerica Park has not been his friend. Though he did throw a 5-hit shutout against the Tigers in Detroit on May 22, 2005 (while still a member of the Diamondbacks), since joining the Sox in 2006, allowing 11 earned runs in his other 9.1 IP. Miner, who has only started 2 games since 2006, started Monday at Kansas City and pitched 6 innings of scoreless ball. He started 1 game in May of last year in a double header against the Red Sox in which he took the loss despite the fact he gave up only 1 earned run in 5.1 innings, but was used as a reliever from there on out. In 2006, he appeared in 27 games for the American League champs, starting 16 of them, but he also posted his career high ERA of 4.84.
Notes: Reflections on Wednesday's comeback, Clayton Richard's debut, a rundown of some more Sox-related news items, and this week's Minor League Recap will come tonight, since I can't watch the game... Fucking WCIU.
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